Nightmare comes blissfully true

A year ago, writer-director James Hemphill was attending a screening of "RoboCop" and "Starship Troopers" at American Cinematheque's sixth annual Festival of Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction at the Aero Theatre. While watching the Paul Verhoeven sci-fi flicks, Hemphill was harboring his own fantasy that someday he would make a movie that would play at the festival. "Little did I know it would be this fast," he says.

Hemphill will be on hand at the Aero's screening Aug. 12 to discuss his first film, "Bad Reputation," a low-budget "Carrie" homage that he shot on digital video. The film stars Angelique Hennessy as a shy high schoolgirl who is raped by classmates at a party -- then turns the tables on her tormentors.

"I have always loved horror films," says Hemphill. "There were basically three movies that made me want to become a director. Two of them were horror films -- 'The Shining' and 'Halloween' -- and the third was a non-horror film, 'Bronco Billy' with Clint Eastwood. I didn't necessarily set out to be a horror director. I wanted to make movies."

The monthlong festival opens Thursday at the Egyptian with a six-day engagement of the new omnibus horror film "Trapped Ashes," written by Dennis Bartok, a former programmer at the Cinematheque. The vignettes were directed by Joe Dante, Sean Cunningham, Ken Russell, John Gaeta and Monte Hellman.

The premise finds seven strangers trapped inside a "House of Horrors" during a movie studio tour. The only way to get out alive is to tell their most horrifying personal stories.

"The entire movie is kind of an homage to my dear friend Max Rosenberg, who founded Amicus Films," says Bartok. "He produced a lot of classic anthology films like 'The House That Dripped Blood.' I wanted to evoke that kind of feel and make it a little more contemporary and bring together a whole group of filmmakers."

Hellman, whose vignette in "Trapped Ashes" is called "Stanley's Girlfriend," directed such cult classics as "Two Lane Blacktop," but he's no stranger to horror and sci-fi genres, having directed "The Beast From Haunted Cave" and did uncredited work on "RoboCop."

" 'Stanley's Girlfriend,' " offers Hellman, is "the kind of horror movie that I like the best. It's really the least horror of any of the stories. It's there, but very subtle. It's hair on the back of your neck rising. When I do horror, I treat it as reality. The supernatural elements the audience can take or leave. I find a realistic way to look at it."